A liquid crystal projector includes a cooling apparatus for cooling down heat sources such as a light source, a liquid crystal panel and the like. Fans are widely employed as the cooling apparatus. However, the fan-based cooling simply feeds air to overall heat sources, and encounters difficulties in achieving sufficient cooling effects. For achieving large cooling effects in the fan-based cooling, a motor must be rotated at higher speeds to increase an air velocity. However, this is not a preferred option because a higher rotational speed of the motor results in an increase in vibrations and operation noise of the motor. Also, in a heat source which locally generates heat such as a light source, it is preferable that a heat generating spot is locally cooled down, but the fan encounters difficulties in performing such local cooling.
Accordingly, there has been proposed a cooling apparatus which is capable of performing local cooling, using a pressure pump (see JP2005-148624A). This cooling apparatus includes a pressure pump (compressor) for taking in and compressing air, an air tank for storing the air compressed by the pressure pump, and a cooling nozzle for discharging the air within the air tank. The pressure pump and air tank are coupled through a communication pipe. The cooling nozzle is disposed such that its discharge port is oriented to a desired spot of a heat source. Since the compressed air discharged from the cooling nozzle is fed to the desired spot of the heat source, the heat source is locally cooled down.